Sometimes I hate horror anthologies. Mind you, not for the content found within, but mostly because it is so incredibly hard to review them. Do you choose to talk about every single segment involved in the actual cut of the film itself? Do you do it as a collective? These decisions are rather difficult, but not impossible to do. Still, 2015's Tales of Halloween, which brings together eleven different filmmakers to direct ten different stories (two share the credit for "This Means War") had me intrigued. Cinematic compendiums that take place on or around All Hallows' Eve aren't as commonplace these days as they could be, and the last ones that immediately come to mind for me are Mike Dougherty's now-classic Trick 'r Treat from 2007 and Kevin Smith's frankly awful segment in last year's mediocre Holidays. Thankfully, these installments seem to be in rather competent hands, with more prominent figures in the small horror scene from across the map sitting in the director's chair this time around.
Tales of Halloween already won points with me by casting Adeienne Barbeau (The Fog, Creepshow) as its voiceover DJ. While not really adding anything to the picture overall, it's still a treat to hear the lady return to the genre that helped make her famous. They also take advantage of the "free domain" market by playing George Romero's iconic Night of the Living Dead on the televisions at any opportunity that is given. Our first segment doesn't quite set the standard of what we should expect, although the concept of a babysitter and her boyfriend trying to scare a little kid with a tale of a child who killed his parents because he wasn't allowed to eat candy is fairly cute. Predictable as the results may be, it's wrapped up with some nice makeup work. Next, we move on to Darren Lynn Bousman's (Saw II-IV) charmingly dark story about a kid whose encounter with Satan himself doesn't exactly go down the way he thinks it will. For me, this ended up being one of Tales' highlights in the first half of its batch, and features an unexpected reveal towards the conclusion. And if we can discuss this movie's positives, I feel as if Lucky McKee (May) deserves special praise for the rather amusingly-titled "Ding Dong," which reunites the director with Pollyanna McIntosh (The Woman, The Walking Dead). She is a real delight to watch here, as she gets the ability to go balls out and act rather creepy as a lady who is rather upset that she is unable to bear children, but hides other secrets from the audience. It's a pleasure to see these two pop up together again in some sort of capacity. The one tale that will most likely get the best feedback from fans is "Friday the 31st," which is helmed by the relatively unknown Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!). What starts off as a run-of-the-mill slasher turns into an absurd, but hilarious tale involving a "foreign" visitor who gets rather upset that he doesn't receive any treats during the evening. This was the closest that I came to flat-out loving anything in Tales of Halloween, and for as outspoken as I am about bootlegging, you should really watch this as soon as....well, here you go actually.
Truth be told, most of Tales' parts feel as if they could have been featured as shorts on a DVD compilation, but none of them are especially bad. Well, save for Axelle Carolyn's "Grim Grinning Ghost," which despite featuring appearances from genre veterans like Lin Shaye (Critters, There's Something About Mary) and Mick Garris (Critters 2, The Stand), is a massive letdown that just kind of concludes with a wet fart. The same can be said for Paul Solet's "The Weak and the Wicked," as it feels slightly out of place and wastes the talents of the rather vexing Grace Phipps (Teen Beach Movie) and Jack Dylan Grazer (It). They also manage to incorporate soon-to-be-defunct heavy music act Trap Them into a chase sequence, but I have to subtract several points for not crediting them for the songs that they used. Mercifully, it was preceded by a much more promising ten minute-long piece: "Trick" starts off as what we will assume to be a play on 2008's The Strangers, but takes a rather nice turn for the better in the last minute or so. By the time that we reached the second-to-last segment in Tales of Halloween, I had noticed that most, if not all of its fables were about throwing in as many plot twists as they could muster instead of just playing it straightforward. That does become mildly irksome, but doesn't detract from the overall enjoyment.
It isn't very likely that this will go down as an all time great (especially since it's only two years old as of this writing), but Tales of Halloween does its job well enough to warrant a thumbs up in my book. The hits far outnumber the misses, the acting is decent, and its aura is one that tells the audience to just kick off their shoes and have fun. Putting this on at a party alongside of the aforementioned Trick 'r Treat or the underrated Body Bags isn't the worst of ideas that one can have. Those lucky enough to have access to Netflix's streaming service can watch this collection for no extra charge, and a slam-packed Blu-ray is out there for purchase.
Oh, and did I mention that the final chapter includes Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) writing and directing a feature about evil pumpkins that eat people and also has motherfucking Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling, Piranha) in it?
No?
Well.........it does.
Anyways, that should do it for the motion picture aspect of this blog-o-thon. But I still have some final thoughts before wrapping everything up:
-If you are a user of the website Letterboxd (and if you aren't, you need to get on that asap), find me as Woodshatter1985. It serves as a nice way to keep up with what folks like you and I get around to viewing or wish to watch in the near future. Depending on how well its stock does over the next year or so, there exists a very small chance that I may just move everything over to there. Again, that won't be decided for some time, but I'm giving you a heads up just in case. Narrowing down this year's list was also the hardest that it has ever been. I had close to NINETY pictures in mind for the seventh year of Unseen Terror, and picking a little more than a third of those took quite a number of weeks to do. I've namedropped a small amount over the course of the past thirty-one days, but I'll list off a few more that just missed the cut:
-Inseminoid
-Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare
-976-Evil, (this was actually started, but due to a combination of time restraints and location, it wasn't finished)
-Storm of the Century (there was more than enough Stephen King for this year)
-Raw (there may be a review of this highly acclaimed French piece in the coming weeks)
-Phantom of the Paradise (when the Blu-ray at my store goes down in price, this could end up here next year)
-Deadtime Stories
-Breeders
-Student Bodies
-The Lure (replace my statement about POTP with "upcoming Criterion sale")
-Train to Busan (same as Raw)
-It Follows (no clue how this didn't make it in but crap like Wrestlemaniac did. I suck)
-The House on Sorority Row
-Dead & Buried
-Alice Sweet Alice
-Death Becomes Her (not really horror)
-The Others (this has missed the marathon for several years for reasons I can't explain)
-Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (.........no)
-The Changeling (confession time: I found myself falling asleep on more than a couple of occasions, but that may have been due to mental exhaustion from work. I'm willing to give this another shot at a later date, especially since it's one of the more highly-respected ghost stories out there)
-The Devil's Backbone (The same as above. I'll finish it when I'm more relaxed and focused, especially with how much I adored Cronos)
There are countless more that I didn't mention, but I'm feeling quite tired right now. As always, I hope that those of you who read this had a wonderfully entertaining Halloween and are prepared to do this again in another twelve months. Keep supporting horror and be good to one another!
